NYACK – For years, Linda Kelly would walk her visiting friends by the stately brick mansion on Broadway, pointing to the sign that read "Fellowship of Reconciliation," without really knowing what it was.

Now, Kelly tells people what F.O.R. is for a living.

"We are the oldest living peace and nonviolent justice organization on the planet," she said on a blustery day as whitecaps kicked up on the Hudson. "And we're right here in Nyack."

Justice means sending representatives to the world's hotspots, like Ferguson, Missouri. It also means training young people in nonviolence. And honoring those who set an example of service to justice.

On Sunday, the group opens its doors to the public for a Winter Solstice Celebration, a five-hour party with a community potluck, entertainment and Peace Awards given to Kim Cross and the Nyack Center and to Herb Kurz, a philanthropist who died Nov. 24. Kurz's son will accept the honor.

"I like to think of F.O.R. as when the body is fighting an infection and the healthy cells go there to fight it. That's what F.O.R. has done," Kelly said. "Wherever there has been strife or extreme human conflict, F.O.R. has been there to provide a third way. It's not pacifist, like sitting back and seeing what happens. It's not fighting actively. We're about resolving human conflict in another way, through nonviolent reconciliation processes."

At its most basic, those processes are akin to the lessons in "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," Kelly said.

The organization — the global branch was founded on the eve of World War I — is committed to speaking truth to power. The group's front parlor, called the Peace Room, has hosted meetings that helped form the Nuclear Freeze movement.

"For 100 years, F.O.R. has been among the first voices to say we need to look at things, from nuclear weapons to Vietnam," Kelly said.

The group has used civilian diplomacy, taking groups to trouble spots to "demystify the other." That has meant trips to wherever the U.S. was poised to attack — to Russia and Central and South America — "to show people that these are humans, not policies."

The odds are stacked against peace, Kelly said.

"Our representative in Ferguson, the Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, organized the clergy to kneel between the young activists, who are new to the path of nonviolence and are carrying enormous outrage from the oppression, and the militarized police," Kelly said. "The clergy knelt and prayed in the midst of violence and tension."

The group has been accused of being political — even of being communist — but F.O.R. is spiritual, Kelly said. It was founded by a famous handshake between a German and an Englishman in 1914. It became an interfaith organization founded by Christians that embraces all faiths.

"Call us naive, but I feel the spirit is big. It might be awkward, but we're seeing people rise up in the Occupy movement and the racial justice movement. It might look like anger and violence, but that's the media," Kelly said. "The media reports on the looting, but that's not all that's happening. We just don't see that story. There's not as much drama in people who are sitting in meditation and praying. That doesn't photograph well."

Winter solstice celebration

What: A potluck afternoon of food, community and music, with the bestowing of Nyack Area Peace Award on Kim Cross and the Nyack Center, and philanthropist Herb Kurz, who died Nov. 24.